On track: Central Corridor Light Rail benchmarks its progress as it gets under way.
Over the past year, Compass staff members have worked on a variety of related indicator projects to help organizations and foundations identify and compile the best data to monitor progress toward their goals. Andi Egbert worked with the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative as they developed their Central Corridor Tracker, a set of 13 indicators designed to understand the transformation that light rail will bring to an 11-mile stretch of University Avenue and nearby neighborhoods. She relates how knowledge from Compass kept that project “on track” and what’s “down the line.”
Minnesotans are ready and willing to cross the great divide. We just need to give them the opportunity and the tools to govern for the common good.
We launched a new section on children and youth at the Compass annual meeting in January.
At the recent Compass annual meeting, Christine Ganzlin introduced the new Children & Youth section on the site, and told audience members why McKnight wanted to partner with other funders and with Compass to provide more and better data on our state's young people.
The data analysts at MN Compass get a lot of email questions about the data we feature on our site and why we do what we do. We thought it would be useful to share the questions we get asked most often with all of you who may be too shy to ask.
In October, Compass hosted its second annual Fact-based fundraising seminar for grant seekers and foundation program officers. Neal Cuthbert, vice president of program at The McKnight Foundation, talked about McKnight's new evaluation framework, the strategy behind it, and how his organization is using evaluation to assess the effectiveness of its grantmaking investments. Here is an excerpt from his remarks.
Ahh, summer. We hate to see you go. But for those of us who care about educational equity, maybe we shouldn't be so sad. A recent article in Time magazine made the case that summer itself is a culprit in the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students, often between white students and students of color.
The Unequal Distribution of Health in the Twin Cities, a new Wilder Research study commissioned by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation, reveals some surprising socioeconomic factors that may influence health in the region. Marsha Shotley talks about the findings and how Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation is working to address them.